Each the lads’s and girls’s U.S. basketball group got here house from Paris with the last word {hardware}: Olympic gold medals. For the lads, Paris marked a fourth consecutive Olympic gold, whereas for the ladies, the win streak prolonged to eight straight gold medals. Each groups have been unsurprisingly dominant all through the Olympics, going 6-0 en path to gold — with the lads successful by a median of twenty-two factors, and the ladies by 15.7 factors.
Nonetheless, the U.S. Olympic runs have been dominated by discourse surrounding roster spots and enjoying time. On the lads’s facet, the exclusion of Celtics Finals MVP Jaylen Brown from the Olympic roster — and the choice to as a substitute invite teammate Derrick White — turned the primary story as soon as Kawhi Leonard was out of the image.
Then, when Jayson Tatum — the second-leading scorer on the 2021 Tokyo Olympic group — was benched for each of USA’s video games in opposition to Serbia, evaluation across the group’s efficiency centered round his DNPs. Charles Barkley was certainly one of many analysts to vocally criticize the choice, with Stephen A. Smith going to this point to describing Steve Kerr’s resolution as “egregious.”
In the meantime, on the ladies’s facet, it was Caitlin Clark’s omission from the Olympic roster that loomed over the match. Many media members blasted the choice to maintain Clark off the roster, with USA As we speak columnist Christine Brennan calling it “the worst participant choice resolution I’ve seen in my 40 years masking the Olympics.”
On Wednesday, Cheryl Reeve, who served as the pinnacle coach of the U.S. ladies’s Olympic basketball group and can be the pinnacle coach of the Minnesota Lynx, expressed her frustration with simply how dominant the discourse round enjoying time and roster spots had grow to be.
In a press convention in Minneapolis, alongside fellow Olympians and Lynx gamers Napheesa Collier (USA), Bridge Carleton (Canada), and Alanna Smith (Australia), Reeves famous the outsized consideration that roster selections and rotations have acquired within the media.
“All you’re speaking about is enjoying time and who’s in, or who’s on the group, or who’s not on the group. That is what we’ve grow to be,” Reeve mentioned. “It makes this the seat that I used to be sitting in just a little bit tougher, rather less rewarding. And I feel that’s a tragic commentary.”
The criticism didn’t cease when the U.S. ladies’s group arrived in Paris. Reeve’s resolution to initially have the Mercury’s Diana Taurasi within the beginning lineup was additionally scrutinized. Taurasi, probably the most adorned Olympian in basketball historical past, struggled in restricted minutes, and was finally relegated to the bench in favor of the Ace’s Jackie Younger, earlier than fully sitting out of the gold medal sport in opposition to France.
Within the press convention on Wednesday, Reeve was requested about Taurasi’s minute within the Olympic run, however declined to remark.
“I’m actually hopeful that we may discover our manner going ahead, that the vitriol, and so on, solely hurts the sport,” Reeve mentioned. “And we could be a lot better than that.”
Reflecting on the Olympic expertise, Reeve additionally famous she labored exhausting to make sure that her gamers would benefit from the pursuit of their first gold medal as a gaggle, and never fear an excessive amount of in regards to the historic context of this system’s greatness.
“What I needed for them was for it to be particular and never really feel the load of, ‘we have to win the eighth [straight gold],’” Reeve mentioned. “As a result of I feel then it will get misplaced — your personal particular journey will get misplaced. And it was our one.. You’re not going to have the identical group the subsequent time. I feel in case you don’t try this, then you definately lose the enjoyment in what you’re doing.”
